I don't often get to see my brother as he lives a long way from me down Essex way but this year we both had a week together catching up and we decided to try a spot of canoeing at Iken canoe near Saxmundham in Suffolk.
The tide was going out as we went up and down the river and the mud was very much exposed on the banks and the higher parts of the channel.
The tide had turned on our return to the hire centre and my brother, Mike, wanted to go swimming so we wandered down to a different part of the river where there is a beach. I hadn't brought any swimwear so I went in wearing my underwear but Mike had a new pair of white Armani swimming shorts so he changed into them. What we hadn't realised that a lot of the river bed is mainly mud and it was deep in places where it was shallow and I sank up to my knees in parts and Mike was doing the same thing.
As we got further out we were able to swim over to a small island in the middle of the river where we had seen some children playing earlier but they had long gone and found that there was a mud pit on this island. I called over to Mike and told him to try out this mud pit and he came over and we both slipped in. The black mud came up to my chest and I could feel the mud soaking through my underwear.
Mike decided to start an all-out mud fight there and then, so the mud went flying. It went everywhere; in our hair, in our faces. It was so much fun. We spent about half an hour playing in the mud, wrestling with each other and dumping handfuls of mud onto each other's heads.
The mud was warm on the surface and felt so much cooler the deeper it went until you hit the bottom.
We decided to get out and swim back to the beach after a while and I nearly lost my underwear in the mud trying to get out. We both cleaned up in the river as best as we could, dried off and headed home. Mike's white shorts didn't survive the mudding despite three washes and are now basically a greyish colour and my formerly white & blue underwear are now a shade of grey and faded blue. I won't forget that day with Mike but I am looking forward to doing it all again next year.